Thursday, September 15, 2005

All the roads into Coventry were crowded as an estimated 20,000 people walked or rode into the city centre to witness the hanging of Nuneaton inn-keeper's daughter Mary Ball.

The date was August 9, 1849; the time 10am; and the place, the old jail and courthouse, now the semi-derelict County Hall, in Cuckoo Lane.

The 31-year-old had three months earlier bought a "pennyworth" of arsenic from a local chemist explaining that she wanted it to "kill bugs."

Instead, she'd put the poison on a mantleshelf at her home in Back Lane, Nuneaton. When husband Thomas returned from a fishing trip complaining of feeling ill, Mary casually suggested he took the "salts" on the shelf as they would do him good.

[snip]

[Nuneaton-born Clive Ball, the great-great-great nephew of Thomas Ball] said: "I can still remember my grandmother telling me the story about the murder.

[snip]

"I'm the great, great grandson of Thomas's brother James and have traced the Ball side of my family back 14 generations to 1654. But I don't expect to find anything more interesting than the murder of Thomas and the hanging of Mary."